Brain Child Page 0,128

it wasn’t Alex. Whoever it was, it wasn’t Alex.

Where the hell were the cops?

And then the front door flew open, and Finnerty and Jackson were in the entry hall.

Alex’s head swung around toward the foyer, and Marsh used the moment. Lunging forward, he grasped the shotgun by the barrel, then threw himself sideways, twisting the gun out of Alex’s hands. The force of his weight knocked Alex off balance, and he staggered toward the fireplace, then caught himself on the mantel. A moment later, his eyes met Marsh’s.

“Do it,” he whispered. “If you loved your son, do it.”

Marsh hesitated. “Who are you?” he asked, his voice choking on the words. “Are you Alex?”

“No. I’m someone else. I’m whoever I was programmed to be, and I’ll do what I was programmed to do. Alex tried to stop me, but he can’t. Do it … Father. Please do it for me.”

Marsh raised the gun, and as Ellen and the two policemen looked on, he squeezed the trigger.

The gun roared once more, and Alex’s body, torn and bleeding, collapsed slowly onto the hearth.

Time stood still.

Ellen’s eyes fixed on the body that lay in front of the fireplace, but what she saw was not her son.

It was someone else—someone she had never known—who had lived in her home for a while, and whom she had tried to love, tried to reach. But whoever he was, he was too far away from her, and she had not been able to reach him.

And he was not Alex.

She turned and faced Marsh.

“Thank you,” she said softly. Then she rose and went to hold her husband.

One arm still cradling the shotgun, the other around his wife, Marsh finally tore his eyes away from the body of his son and faced the two policemen who stood as if frozen just inside the front door. “I … I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice breaking. “I had to …” He seemed about to say something else, but didn’t. Instead, he let the gun fall to the floor, and held Ellen close. “I just had to, that’s all.”

Jackson and Finnerty glanced at each other for a split second, and then Finnerty spoke.

“We saw it all, Dr. Lonsdale,” he said, his voice carefully level. “We saw the boy attacking you and your wife—”

“No!” Marsh began, “he didn’t attack us—”

But Finnerty ignored him. “He attacked you, and you were struggling for the gun when it went off.” When Marsh tried to interrupt him again, he held up his hand. “Please, Dr. Lonsdale. Jackson and I both know what happened.” He turned to his partner. “Don’t we, Tom?”

Tom Jackson hesitated only a second before nodding his head. “It’s like Roscoe says,” he said at last. “It was an accident, and we’re both witnesses to it. Take your wife upstairs, Dr. Lonsdale.”

Without looking again at the body on the hearth, Ellen and Marsh turned away and left the room.

EPILOGUE

María Torres drew her shawl close around her shoulders against the chill of the December morning, then locked the front door of her little house and slowly crossed the street to the cemetery behind the old mission.

The cemetery was bright with flowers, for no one in La Paloma had forgotten what had happened three months earlier. All of them were buried here. Valerie Benson only a few yards from Marty Lewis, and Cynthia and Carolyn Evans, side by side, a little further north. All their graves, as they were every day, were covered with fresh flowers.

In the southeast corner, set apart from the other graves, lay Alex Lonsdale. On his grave only a single flower lay—the white rose delivered each day by the florist. María paused at Alex’s grave, and wondered how long the roses would come, how long it would be before the Lonsdales, three months gone from La Paloma, forgot about their son. For them, María was sure, there would be other children, and when those children came, the roses would stop.

Then it would be up to her. Long after his parents had stopped honoring his memory, she would still come and leave a flower for Alejandro.

She moved on into the oldest section of the cemetery, where her parents and grandparents were buried, and where now, finally returned to his family, her son lay as well. She stood at the foot of Ramón’s grave for several minutes, and, as she always did, tried to understand what part he had played in what she had come to think of as the days of vengeance. But, as always,